


Reasons Why

by zeldadestry



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Community: 100_women, Episode Related, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-31
Updated: 2007-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:23:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something was clear to her in this terrifying moment with him that was not clear in others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reasons Why

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 050, 'nurture', for 100_women fanfic challenge  
> episode coda for #312, 'One Day, One Room'

She needed to get on her treadmill, it was time for her morning run, but Chase was sitting on it and finger painting. "What the hell are you doing?"

He looked up at her with big, sad, don't be mean to me but you will be I expect you to be, eyes. "Waiting for my dad."

She bent down to his level. "Your dad's dead, Chase."

He pressed his lips together, dropped his head back down to the paper and added another ray of light to the sun, dipped his fingers into the black paint and added another v to represent a bird flying through the sky. "Then I'm waiting for _him_," he said.

She didn't need to ask who he was talking about. "House isn't your dad, Chase, and he's not a good substitute for your dad, either. You need to go home."

"I am home," he said and pointed into the distance.

"No, you're at my house and you need to go home."

"I'm at my house and you're at your house."

"You're not a little kid, anymore. You're grown up, start acting like it."

He shook his head, stuck his fingers in his ears to better ignore her. She turned on the treadmill, regardless of his position on it. He flew backwards and the paint sprayed through the air, splattering her walls with a rainbow of colors. Chase lay crumpled against the wall. "Sorry," she said. "But you're in the way." The treadmill was running, but she couldn't hop up on it just yet. There was something…she felt like she'd forgotten something else she was supposed to do. She looked down at Chase for guidance. He was rubbing at the spots on his shirt where paint had fallen. "Sorry," she said, again.

Chase shrugged. "It comes out in the wash. You know that. Everything gets erased in the wash."

He was right. None of this would matter, later on. They would both forget about it. He would forget she'd been a bitch and lost her temper, she would forget that he'd acted like the little boy who was always the last to be picked up from school. "Chase," she said, hoping he would look at her, but he did not.

Still scrubbing at his shirt, he said, "Wilson's waiting for you, you know."

She walked in the direction he pointed and Cuddy grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into the bathroom, sat her down on the toilet. Now Cuddy was the one with color all over her fingertips. "You're not ready yet," she said, and Cameron let her rub something cold and moist over her face, onto her cheeks and lips and the tip of her nose. "There," she said, and handed Cameron the mirror.

Her face was paper white and there were circles of red on her cheeks, the tip of her nose, her lips were red. "You made me look like a clown," she complained.

"You're not a clown. He's the clown. I made you look like a fool," Cuddy replied.

"I don't want to look like a fool."

"What does it matter what we look like? You better go. Wilson's waiting for you."

She walked down her hallway, except that now it was like the corridors of old schools she'd gone to, and she knew she'd been there before, but she couldn't remember her way, she could see that the hallway continued on for miles and miles, and in desperation she pushed open the next door she came across. Then she was in a huge lecture hall, and she was all alone, in the last row. Wilson was down down down, far away, standing behind the podium. "What class is this?" she asked. "I'm pretty sure I didn't sign up for this. I graduated!" Wilson kept lecturing, writing notes on the board, too quickly, she couldn't keep up. She raised her hand again. "Will this be on the exam?" But he did not answer. She grabbed her backpack, it was really heavy, and slung it over both her shoulders. It was so heavy it made her slump. What was she carrying around? What was this responsibility? She was afraid it was something - someone - from the morgue. She made her way down the stairs and Wilson was still talking, looking down at his notes. When she reached his side he looked up at her. He was wearing glasses and a tweed jacket. She reached out to him, and he pushed her away and she fell back, back, onto a leather chaise. Now he was a psychiatrist, sitting in the chair across from her, writing down everything she said, or everything he thought about what she said, into a little notebook. "What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong with me?"

"Where does it hurt?"

"I don't know." She sat up suddenly. Where was the bag, the body bag she'd been carrying with her? "Have you seen it?"

"You don't love him," Wilson said, and she knew he was talking about House.

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do." She wasn't going to let him get away with this, with House. She would prove it to him, as long as it took.

"You want to heal him, and that means you think you have what he needs, some missing part. So, how is he going to get that lost piece? You won't give it to him, he'll have to share it with you, merge with you to be whole. You have to consume him to make him better, isn't that the truth of it?"

"Like you're any different."

"I am, actually."

"Yes," she said, "you are." Because she could see it, how Wilson wanted to be the one consumed. "But how's it any better? If what you're saying is true, then none of it would be mutual."

"Keep going."

"But if what he wants and what you want matches up, then it would be mutual. Like someone who wants to hurt and the person who wants to be hurt."

"Keep going."

"There's no place to go. I'm not in competition with you."

"No?"

"No." But they were missing it - she tried to circle back - what had been the point here? There was a point she had to make. Oh, right. "I do love him." But now that she said it, did it sound phony, false, even a lie? "Don't I? Can you check?" Her shirt unbuttoned for him on its own, unaided by her fingers, and he drew a stethoscope from underneath the table and pressed the round metal against her chest, and it was hot, not cold like it should have been. She could hear her own heart, beating loudly, heard it as he heard it, heard it race.

"You love," Wilson tipped his chair back, as though to gain more distance from her, a more accurate perspective, "the performance."

"The performance? I don't know what you're talking about." But she did. She had, it was like a shadow at her heels, at her back, making her spine tingle. She knew what he meant. But which performance, whose performance? Was it his or her own? "Which performance do I love?" she asked, and she knew what his answer would be before he spoke it. "All of them."

"Not all." He was packing his things. "I have to go now. He needs me."

"He needs you." There was no point in arguing that. She could see it, see it every day, if she wanted to, the significance behind all their little interactions. She could see the moments when House was himself with Wilson, and was happy to be himself, himself, not the performance. And he did not always perform with her, no, but he was never easy in himself when he was with her. He wanted to hide from her, and she hated it, but she didn't blame him.

She was by herself in the office and someone unseen shoved her from behind and then she was lying on her belly in a bed, not her own, a hospital bed, and Foreman was beside her, staring at her, eyes as intense and frightening as they were then. "I'm going to die," he said.

"You're not going to die."

"Yes, I am."

He reached out for her hand and she took it, warm and thick heeled, into her own. "You are my friend," she said, gave his own words back to him, and something caught in her throat. She knew the line that was coming next, she knew what she was supposed to say, what she had said, and she said it again, not because it was expected, or even begged for, but again because she wanted to give it, because something was clear to her in this terrifying moment with him that was not clear in others. "I forgive you."

"Thank you. Thank you." And she knew, knew the real reason she wanted to be with the breaking, the broken. There was the only real life, it was there. It was the performance over, done, all masks removed, the cocoons splitting open to reveal what had always been there. The man who was able to tell her, only near death, that he needed to be remembered, even if it meant pain. Revelations were only possible like this, and she wanted to tell Foreman that, and she opened her mouth but did not speak. He had fallen asleep, his cheek pressing against her shoulder.

Someone had opened the window, the sun was rising in her face, higher and higher, brighter and brighter and very loud. "Eric?" she called out, but there was no answer, and she was awake in her own bed, alone. The alarm was blaring at her and she rolled over on her side, stretched out her arm and turned it off. She needed to get up. She needed to get her run in before she went to the hospital. There was no Chase acting like a little boy there, of course, but the reality of it struck her as sterile and lonely compared to the dream. She took a few sips of water, her throat was dry, slipped her tennis shoes on and hopped on the machine. Running, running, but Foreman's face would appear before her, fall like a drop of water into the still pool of her consciousness, and create ripples, rock the boats, the leaves, that were like her dormant thoughts. The performance, she thought, but that was not a performance, his hand on her wrist, his eyes, like what would kill him was not the disease, but the unresolved unforgiven actions that lay between them. She did not think of that day, could not think of it, without this, this horrible weight on her back, the body bag of her dream, the gulf inside her that had developed from carrying it, like a person hollowed themselves out to create more space for it. How easy it had been, when he had returned to the performance, when Foreman had been back at work, acting like life was a fuckin' Disney movie, talking about how every day was a gift, how easy it had been to go back to ignoring the complexity of her feelings for him. Day in, day out, always on the surface. Like she loved him in that moment, loved him as much as she had ever loved anyone, just then, just then, when he had spoken to her like that, when some part of her had caved, disintegrated, realized that she could not pretend, could not use her moral high ground as a weapon. What was the performance? It was the disguise, the mask, that one used so that it was not obvious how much one suffered. She had her own, everyone had one, and was dream Wilson, that bastard, right? Was loving House pretend? Was it loving his performances, not who he really was? But more than that, was what she really loved her own image of herself, her own performance? When Foreman took the time to talk to a patient, after they were out of danger, after they'd been diagnosed and hopefully cured, when he spoke to them about their future, about how they would go forward, wasn't that for them, for them, those he saw suffering? Wasn't it more for them than it was when she did it? Why did she do it? For them or for the performance? What had House said at their awkward dinner? That she believed she could save damaged people? But she didn't believe it. She wouldn't keep trying to prove it if she believed it. Running, running, and her mind would still again, go blank, her face smoothed as well, smooth and empty, no feeling, no thought, just running, running. _Running away_, a voice said in her head, but she ignored it, and soon enough it receded.


End file.
